


A Boy And His Shadow

by Devilinthebox (princegrisejoie)



Category: Death Note
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Chronological, Disturbing Themes, Inspired by Art, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 14:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3613983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrisejoie/pseuds/Devilinthebox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a lonely soul, and the black notebook and everything plays out the same except Light's sins are etched on his face. It's like the Picture of Dorian Gray, but in reverse. His soul is stripped bare for everyone to see. [prompt fill]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Boy And His Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a mere writing exercise but well. It's inspired by this fanart: http://mellodear.tumblr.com/post/112416469861/danathelaugh-soas95-just-a-death-note-fan-art and xforestofinkx tags on tumblr. Hope you enjoy. There wasn't room for a true story, it's more of a character study.

I

Light decides to ignore him. The first time he meets these glowing eyes, his stomach twists and burns. But he turns on his heels with the usual elegance. He ignores him, for months. He tells Ryûk about it, but the God of Death has no knowledge of the supernatural, apparently.

“The notebook changes you. It shows on your face.” He says casually, and demands another apple.

Perhaps Light’s appearance hasn’t changed. The sleepless nights have taken their toll on him, that’s all. Bloodshot eyes and pallid skin are easy to mask. It’s a stressful purpose Light has inflicted upon himself. The possibility of death sleeps under his roof (sometimes, when he’s not chasing after Kira) – it would be an execution, swift and merciful or so they promise, all self-righteous. Light is holding his breath all the time. Or he would, if the notebook didn’t ensure him he would never be breathless again. Light is revealed by the notebook. He was drowning and it saved him, not by rising him above the surface but by teaching him to breathe under water. He can see clearly through the depths now.

The notebook doesn’t change him, no. It’s guiding him out of the world’s nastiness. If the universe is one wicked maze, with dangers and monsters at every corner, the notebook is the only thread he will ever need to find his way out.

It’s just a notebook, with infinite pages and a black cover he loves to touch. It’s just _that_. But Light will reveal the notebook, just as it revealed him. He reads the rules over and over, with the same zeal he once learnt his lessons. He loses himself in it avidly, with a profound, childish joy – he considers the notebook his saviour. If he ever has second thoughts, all he has to do to is envision his existence deprived of the notebook. Nonstop solitude and the incapacity of doing anything about it.

One day – it’s after he lashed out at Lind L. Tailor, that liar, Light is taken back by his reflection. His eyes are dark and glowing, like the most terrifying gems. There is nothing left of his boyhood; apollonian features faded in favour of a predatory smile that eats his face. Light reassures the little boy in him. If the monster is trapped behind the glass, it won’t eat you from the inside out. All he has to do is hide it. It’s simple enough. He tells his father (the image of virtue): “If something happens to you, I’ll destroy Kira”. And the pieces fall into place again.

Light eliminates Raye Penber, and his colleagues, and finally, Naomi Misora. A wild, irrepressible rush of satisfaction seizes him. And not one hint of guilt. Predictably, he brushes that off along with the rest – the ever-glowing eyes (red, the colour of the blood he never has to see) and the bared teeth, too sharp, for a human devoted to humanity. He never got to be an adult – he was a boy and then matured into something monstrous.

Still, it’s getting harder to conceal the truth.

There is a part of him who doesn’t even want to – if that’s what Kira looks like, if that’s what the notebook has in store for him, then…shouldn’t he accept that, along with the rest? He misses Light Yagami’s looks. He had the air of a young martyr.

“Are you okay, Light?” Sayu’s voice seems to echo off the house’s walls, as in a cathedral. Light hides behind a deadpan expression. His sister is sat on the couch, ankle squared over her knee. “You look exhausted.”

Light can’t smile at her, or she will understand. For a flicker of a moment, she’s the little red riding hood and he’s the wolf. He flinches at the thought of ever hurting her. It dawns on him that he might have to, one day, just as he had to sacrifice his good-looks and charming smile.

“Do you think virtue is something visible?” he muses.

She stares at him, bug-eyed. “You’re asking me that? You’re the bright one.” Light discerns a hint of sorrow in her tone and he wonders if she resents him sometimes.

Light takes a breath and a sip of his tea. “What do you think Dad believes?”

“That a heart set in the wrong place doesn’t change your looks, but distorts your perception.”

She sounds like she’s repeating a text but he is still grateful.

It’s just his _perception_ then. Light writes fifty names that night and his hand never quaver. If it’s an illusion, then it’s curable. It will not take long before he sees his refined features again. He avoids the mirror for days – nothing is more terrible than a misshapen face where distant traces of beauty persist.

II

Light’s voice is ragged when he confesses. “I may be Kira, unconsciously”. He urges L to lock him up, extends his hands, wrists bare, waiting for the biting cold metal to leave its red mark. Of course, it’s part of yet another grand scheme. The detective’s gaze falls on him, slowly, cautiously. Light maintains his composure, and his back arch in pain as he feels _something_ peeling off his skin. He stands still, hoping the gaping wound on his back is indeed imaginary. At this point, better insane than executed.

There is no mirror in his cell. Light’s fingers skims the sensitive skin of his neck, relishing the softness of it. It’s been so long. He feels the monster inexorably fading within him. That’s when he offers sweet-smelling, devoted Light to the Greatest Detective in the world. Light and his entrancing beauty, his low-key masochism, his carefully crafted words.

 “Have you ever imagined how Kira must look like?” Light asks, turning his head to L. It’s just another day of chasing after Kira, and he needs to get the words out of his mind.

A faint smile drifts across L’s lips. “Lonely” is all he answers.

Light rests his chin in his palm, deep in thought. “Do you think a man who sinned sees himself differently?”

L is taken back by the question. Perhaps he brings Light to mind and compares him to the Light he first met. “I think the man who sinned looks less like himself. He strayed away, after all.”

Light cocks his head. “Nobody’s born a sinner, according to you?”

“No. That would be too convenient, don’t you think?” L says.

Light’s heart misses a beat. “I agree” he says without thinking much.

Memories never die. They dive deep inside him and he forgets the monster as the monster forgets him. How pleasant, to be beautiful again. Beautiful and empty, Kira says in the back of his mind, a pretty canary repeating the words they told him. It makes him think of Dorian Gray and Lord Henry’s words – Light Yagami is a man whose virtues are borrowed. He understands now. He is empty. L fills the emptiness like nothing else. A hesitant touch in a rainstorm is not enough to save him from a self-inflicted fate.

 III

The files are destroyed with a haunting sound. Light feels he is standing at L’s bedside. The reflection in the black screen stares at him. In the full bloom of its power, Kira seems almost majestic. Does it matter, if the last shred of light has disappeared from his face? Does it matter, when a new bright world is growing inside him? There is a cult following him now, devoted to the human-god he became. His fingers skim slowly, lovingly over the surface of the screen. The lie became truth.

Kira is not made of marble and when he comes over Light again, he’s changed, he’s hungry, he’s swelling with power. It’s more than a simple touch of cruelty now – there is nothing left of Light’s body. It nothing but a human-sized blaze of pain he has to carry with him.

Wearing Light’s mask drains him. It’s like living with a ghost. He considers, for a moment, abandoning Light and parade the world as Kira. He could be ugly and powerful, right? He observes the face lurking beneath the mirror. What a dreadful sight it is now; a starving beast. Nobody would trust him, with a face like that. He looks dead. Only his eyes live. Perhaps he can be deformed and powerful, but Kira fancies himself a martyr, not a tyrant. And martyrs are always beautiful in the paintings, with their pained expressions and their rueful eyes.

Still, he refuses to think of his reflection as a monster for who spits on his own soul? He doesn’t have to love it either. He sees it as a fatality. A price to pay.

Matsuda, and Ide, Aizawa and the others are only voices in the void – he barely distinguishes the words they say. It’s an endless, soothing sound, like that of the water throbbing in the ears of the drowning man. Sometimes, Light nods absently and he has to pull himself back to reality for fear they will see his sharp teeth and high cheekbones.

Then, Soichirô Yagami dies.

“He would want us to work even harder.” Light tells everyone. His voice is dead. “I won’t rest until we catch Kira.” His heart hammers in his chest at the name. Kira is digging into his face, trying to peel off the mask. Light soothes him with empty promises, an area of language he specialises in (Of course, he’s lying, of course he won’t hurt Kira, of course it’s Near he will eliminate)

“I am so sorry, Light.” Matsuda’s voice is that of a grieving son, today. His pained expression is unbearable.

Light’s hands latches on to the sink. It’s shining, immaculate, sickly clean. His mother has always had her own way of shushing the sadness. It obeyed her and left the home, generally. There was no sadness in her home, only rule-followers, diligent sons and good-natured daughters. Such a pleasant place it was, the Yagami home, and that was all his mother’s work. Its own little ordered world, really. It disturbed Light, that the rest of the world was never as quiet.

“I’m here if you need anything.”

A shaking hand is gently placed on his shoulder. Light refuses to look up; it means facing the mirror and god knows who is standing in it. He looks like the armies of hell marched on him. His features, he senses it, are wolfish again and he can’t summon Light Yagami’s mask. It’s gone. He can’t rule anything, scarred like that. His stomach is sinking inside him. Mello must be disfigured, he thinks merrily. He brings his image to mind – that relentless parasite, now unrecognisable. Light looks up, meets his own glow of a look. His skin looks dry and Light is certain it could be easily pulled off, like that of a dead man. Like L’s. The cadence of his breathing increase madly.

Matsuda squeezes his arm. “Light, you should rest now.” Light discerns a hint of fear in his voice. A smile dangle on the corner of his lips.

**IV**

Eventually, the monster grows formless. It is obvious such a creature isn’t meant to exist, that it was an accident. His sins dug deep into his face and every god-fearing human he assassinated carved its name on his skin.

That night, his hand smashes against the surface of the mirror. Blood drops, red and shiny, on the scattered pieces of glass.

 “I can’t live like this”, he hisses, “Even if the sacrifice is worth it.”

Light waits and waits for his reflection to explain itself. He just smiles his demon smile. Never speaks to him. Why would he? They’re one, after all.

There is a way out, of course, and he will find it. His knees fall beneath him and he sits legs pulled to his chest on the bathroom floor. He has been undone and remade again. Surely, a few pieces must have been scattered in the process, put in the wrong place.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t on the right path.

Soichirô Yagami was his father, but not his guide. You have to let go of the past, someday. Light Yagami knew that when he sacrificed his body and soul to the idea of Kira. Now the idea is about to become a reality.

His hands shiver in anticipation. He is still holding a shred of glass; it penetrates, deep in his flesh. Light loathes the smell of blood, hates the taste of tears. Reminds him of a humanity he deems too fragile to handle Kira. Light can’t wait for the day the seed Kira has planted inside him blooms. If he wins, the pieces will come together again. Not that he needs another reason to defeat them after all. Everyone wants to survive.

Now, for his appearance…Maybe, when he rules over everything, he will have every mirror banished? Then, appearances will not matter anymore. He laughs in-between desperate sobs.

**V**

The bullets tear the skin and the stabbing pain is almost a deliverance. It weighs on his shoulders like an armour, this wrecked skin. He has knights now (they even kneel before him and all). _They_ can wear the armour. Light Yagami is just an idea of a person, now – he has no need for a body. As for Kira, well, Gods are ethereal, aren’t they? Perhaps, when they’re all dead, he can ask Ryûk for the wings again.

When they’re all dead, yes. But for now, they refuse to die and the rush of blood that coursed through his veins is frozen.

The wings would be useless, he thinks, because you carry your body with you. Always, whether you’re swirling in thin air or crawling on the ground, it follows you. It’s a shame, that you can’t forget that this vulgar assemblage of skin and fluids and flesh is you, just for a minute.

They prowl in his direction and he laughs again. “See that? My face? It’s the sort of monster this world creates!” he shrieks. Surely now everyone can see him. A weight has been lifted off his shoulders – the mask, undoubtedly, has been dashed to pieces. His eyes fall on the water at his feet, a sad little puddle that is enough to reflect a truth that is just as sad.

 **VI**.

When Light’s body is discovered on the abandoned stairs, uncoagulated blood still welling out from the wounds, they all come to the same silent decision. The body will not be exposed.

It’s horrifying how his deformed face just stares blankly at them. His features froze in a last frightened cry of agony. Eyes flickered but never shut. You can only ignore the truth for so long.


End file.
